LONG story incredibly short, depression happened. I’m only now beginning to understand that depression – at least for me – didn’t so much HAPPEN as it reared it’s ugly head from the depths in which it has been lurking all this time. Because make no mistake, it has been lurking. For a long time. This is not a post-partum thing, or an out-of-work thing. Those things only wake up the beast, but the beast is always there.

Which gave me an idea, actually. I think I am going to give my depression a name, and think of it just the way I’m writing about it – a beast. I would say a dragon, except that I like dragons a lot and think they’re rather incredibly awesome. (And real, by the way, but we can talk about my alternate-reality theories another time.)

So what does this son of a bitch look like?

Hmmm…ever read The Gruffalo? A very clever children’s book (the kind I wish I could get off my ass and write), it has an incredibly ugly subject. But, being a children’s book, he’s ugly in a rather endearing kind of way. Do I want to think of my depression as endearing?

The flip side of it, though, is that if I make it into a harmless ridiculous thing, maybe it won’t be so bad. Of course, the next bout could smash THAT theory to bits.

No, I think he needs to be something I can get MAD at, which I can’t if I think of my depression as some hapless idiot. He needs to be evil, an asshole of the first order, a real jerk that bring out the righteous I-am-Buffy type anger. And I need to think of a good name for him (although naming him after one of the jerks I’ve dated in life has occurred to me, that would be giving any of them way too much credit.)

Well, for now, screw all that. I’m back. And I’m going to beat this son of a bitch with all I have because my two kids are depending on me to do it. So, you as yet unnamed beastie of hell, fuck you, okay? I don’t claim to be done with you – I know we have more battles to fight. And sometimes you might beat me, but I’m going to win the war. As they used to say back in the day, that’s not a threat – it’s a promise.